Revisiting negative positions through Add-On Gating

[chrysn]

With Add-On Gating available in Firefox 108 and WebMIDI being the pioneer extension that's add-on gated:

Is there a (or: What is the) procedure to re-open negative positions as add-on gated? Is there a line established between "can be add-on gated" and "not even with gates" (other than that someone would need to do the implementation work)?

It might be convenient to gather that information (initially here, eventually in the README ) before people come in storming to their old threads and ask in each of them, without a concrete procedure or criteria. (I was very tempted to rush to #95, but it's probably better to approach that with structure).

[bholley]

Thanks for filing a separate issue, I agree that's preferable.

For now we plan to observe the WebMIDI experiment to see how well add-on-gating works in practice for sites and users. We haven't yet made any decisions about extending this mechanism to other APIs, but any such decisions will be informed by how well we think it's achieving its goals.

[webprofusion-chrisc]

Hi, are there any docs/help to using webmidi via this add-on gating? So far I'm seeing sites with webmidi support that aren't triggering the permission prompt and I wondered what the blocker for that could be, such as requiring user interaction first perhaps .e.g .: https://codesandbox.io/s/midi-pedal-mapper-bonfy

I can see WebMidi could not be enabled. DOMException: WebMIDI requires a site permission add-on to activate in the console but there is no UI prompt.

[evilpie]

This is probably not the right place to discuss WebMIDI problems, but when opening your site in my browser I see the following error message in the web console:

WebMIDI access request was denied: ❝SitePermsAddons can't be installed from cross origin subframes❞. See https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Web/API/Navigator/requestMIDIAccess for more information

[FroggMaster]

I'm rather interested in this topic as well. I would really like to see the Web Bluetooth API available in Firefox.

I had been working on converting an Extension that is already supported in Chrome to Firefox for Bluetooth dice rolls, but found that my journey was abruptly halted when I learned Firefox does not support the Web Bluetooth API at all.

[beriberikix]

@bholley has any observations been made or documented in the past year?

[bholley]

@beriberikix Yes. After a few rounds of iterating in the consent flow we finally ended up with something that users seem to understand most of the time. We revised our position on WebSerial in #959 and would take a patch that meets our standards. That would be the next step for add-on-gated APIs in Firefox.

[beriberikix]

Is there a good overview on add-on-gated APIs in Firefox? I'd like to send someone so that they understand how they work and any specifics around their implementation.

[bholley]

@beriberikix They are intended to be transparent to developers — the add-on is auto-generated, and is basically a different UX metaphor in place of permission prompts. Sites that use gated APIs don't need to do anything special for Firefox.

The user-facing documentation (which is surfaced as a "learn more" link in the install flow) is here.

[reillyeon]

Given the revised position on Web Serial is Mozilla similarly open to implementations of WebHID, WebUSB or Web Bluetooth as add-on-gated APIs?

[bholley]

Given the revised position on Web Serial is Mozilla similarly open to implementations of WebHID, WebUSB or Web Bluetooth as add-on-gated APIs?

Not at this time. Those APIs reach a much wider, more heterogeneous, and less-developer-oriented set of devices. In principle I think we could consider them in more restricted scenarios — such as for devices that explicitly advertise themselves as usable from the web — but we haven’t really looked into it.

[FroggMaster]

Given the revised position on Web Serial is Mozilla similarly open to implementations of WebHID, WebUSB or Web Bluetooth as add-on-gated APIs?

Not at this time. Those APIs reach a much wider, more heterogeneous, and less-developer-oriented set of devices. In principle I think we could consider them in more restricted scenarios — such as for devices that explicitly advertise themselves as usable from the web — but we haven’t really looked into it.

I'm eagerly following this GitHub issue for the time that Mozilla begins considering Web Bluetooth. It was extremely disappointing to have to stop my development for the extension that would allow me to use my Bluetooth enabled dice for RPGs within Firefox.

[carrierfry]

I am in the same boat as @FroggMaster. I want to bring my chrome extension for Bluetooth Dice over to Firefox but because of the missing Bluetooth Web API I can't. I am hopeful that this might be a solution in the future

[blalasaadri]

Joining @FroggMaster and @carrierfry in the "Web Bluetooth for dice" corner here. I totally get that allowing connections to Bluetooth devices is risky and understand why Mozilla decided not to implement the API as it was suggested. But if there were a safer way to add that support through Add-On Gating...